Since I last wrote on this topic, I went to see one of the very movies I said I'd ignore, Black Swan. OK, I'm not very consistent. But I have sort of a good excuse. My sweetie was out of town for the week, I have a bunch of free movie tickets and keep getting more, I was getting cabin fever working on a manuscript, I needed a two hour break, there weren't that many movie choices, and Natalie Portman has been getting rave reviews for her performance.
Ms. Portman was, indeed, wonderful. The movie? Oh my. Yes, it was very sad. But it was also very lame. I closed my eyes a bunch of times during the gorier parts. Then there was the sex. I happen to like movie sex scenes much more than movie gore. Ms. Portman did for masturbation what Meg Ryan did for fake orgasms in When Harry Met Sally. Sad to say that was the highlight of the movie.
I never suspended my disbelief. In fact, I'm thinking the whole movie was an extended dream sequence. The major theme of the movie - that to pursue art you have to be tortured, unhappy and driven - left me cold. I don't believe that is the case at all.
I will, in fact, still go to see a sad movie or read a sad book now and then. But the bar is very, very high. I watched The White Ribbon last year and was mesmerized. That was true of Winters Bone as well. The book Nothing To Envy was depressing as hell, but I couldn't put it down. Ditto for Russell Banks' Continental Drift. And Ian McEwan's Antonement literally made me cry as I was reading.
So there are exceptions. I just don't seek the depressing anymore. The fact is that there is a bias in art. If you're a serious artist, you're supposed to be depressing. I don't get that bias. Comedy is viewed as some lesser thing. I disagree. But the end result is that if you're interested in any art that is carefully made, you're always awash in works full of anguish. You can't avoid them.
A couple of months ago, James Wood railed in the New Yorker about the British comic novel. In particular, he railed about two novels of Howard Jacobson, the Finkler Question - which won the Booker Prize this past year - and Kalooki Nights. I've read Kalooki Nights, which I wouldn't call a great novel. It was a bit clumsy both in its comic touches and its construction, but it did have a lot of heart and its affecting moments. James Wood wouldn't agree, but I'm afraid Mr. Wood is just a sourpuss. Or he doesn't get or appreciate shtick and misdirection, classic aspects of Jewish humor. He's entitled, of course, to have his personal taste. If he wants to be miserable and stick with art steeped in misery that's just fine with me.
Yesterday, Robert Pinsky (my latest Facebook friend) mentioned to me the late great writer (and former colleague) Reynolds Price's classification of Southern writers: Good Ol' Boys, Southern Gentlemen, and Rascapalions. Jewish writers can be similarly divided into bulvans, kvetchers, and tachshits (musclemen, complainers, and impish troublemakers). Mr. Wood appreciates kvetchers like Philip Roth. Mr. Jacobson is, on the other hand, by and large a tachshit. I happen to appreciate tachshits. Kvetchers like Roth? Not so much.
I like shtick and misdirection. Like is actually too modest a description. Love is more true. Ironic shtick and misdirection are even better. It doesn't have to be Jewish. I don't know how Mr. Wood feels about V.S. Naipaul, but in one of my favorite novels, the very Dickensian A House for Ms. Biswas, there is a section where the Biswas family opens up a little grocery. The enterprise takes off, easily stealing business from the established store. All is well until someone else has the same idea as the Biswas family. The customers, in search of the latest/greatest purchasing thrill flee the Biswas' shop to the even newer store. That's just fabulous shtick. You laugh and cry at the same time.
Maybe the truth is that my love of the sad and depressing was just a phase, albeit a forty year long one. I've always liked to laugh first and foremost. If a movie doesn't have a single joke in it, I'll likely never watch it more than once. On my iPod, the popular music I have stored is dominated by clever musicals like Sweeney Todd (if you don't think this musical is funny much of the time, I don't know what to say) and Guys and Dolls, zany shtick like Mickey Katz, and a boat load of Tom Lehrer. For me, a clever novelty song beats just about anything else out there. Even my old 45's are dominated by novelty songs although I must admit that nowadays things like Leader of the Laundromat don't quite hit my funny bone the way they did when I was eight years old.
I can't remember which comic said that comedy was a response to anger and despair so profound and thorough that you couldn't deal with it directly. You had to find another way. I don't think that's particularly right. Comedy is a salve, though, for life's difficulties and it can be a pure expression of joy. For me it's actually the highest form of art. Anyone can kvetch. But to find that sliver that makes someone smile or laugh, that's work, serious work indeed.
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